"No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck. " Fredrick Douglass.

Friday, July 20, 2012

*Yawn* Murder.

Let's talk about Murder boys and girls. With all the hoopla and the calls for gun grabbing again I just can't keep my mouth shut, because such stupidity deserves bitch slapping.
As of last Census there were 310,000,000 people in the US. The murder rate for the last 12 years has been anywhere between 14,700 and 17,000. That 3000 point leeway hasn't varied for more than that 12years..closer to 15.. On the low end 14,748 in 2010[the last year I can find numbers for.] and on the high end of that scale 17,030 in 2006. The highest the murder rate has EVER been was in 1991 when there were 24,700. The number of of citizens in the US for those years are 308,745,538 in 2010, 299,398,434 in 2006, and finally 252,177,000 in 1991. So lets take those numbers as a percentage of population 14,748 is .005% of the population. Or for those of you who have forgotten your basic math as it pertains to decimal points. that's 5 THOUSANDTHS of a percent of the population.. In 2006 with 17,030 murders...that's .005% or 5 THOUSANDTHS of a percent. Now for 1991. 24,700 is .009% or 9 THOUSANDTHS of a percent of population. Now how many of those are mass murders? AGAIN less than 1%...that hasn't changed in more than 2 decades. So really do we have THAT big a problem or are people just seeing the numbers and saying Oh my god!, having an intensely emotional reaction and forgetting to think logically. Now are large percentage of those deaths caused by gunshot wounds? Ain't gonna lie...the answer is Yes. Here's 1 of 3 questions though. Is it REALLY worth endangering 300 MILLION+ lives a year...to save upwards of 17,000 maximum a year? It's a cold numbers game and for the gun grabbers the numbers...just don't add up. So with this newest shooting in Aurora...here's another question. Who are you going to trust more with your family's safety? Yourself and your family and close friends? Or some dude you've never met who won't get to the site of a crime til well after the deed is already done? The dead are already slain, The women and children already raped, the house already ransacked for valuables and those valuable taken and your life destroyed.

Remember boys and girls even the courts will tell you
"The constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It tells
the state to let the people alone, it does not require the federal
government or the state to provide services, even so elementary a
service as providing law and order." So...having said that....

Ben Franklin wrote that he who would give up essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserves NEITHER. So do you really expect more than 40% [last I checked I think the number was closer to 47% and the numbers have been climbing for years] of the population of the United States to give up their right to bear arms, or have infringed upon for the sake of at maximum...9 THOUSANDTHS of a percent of the population?

Now some of you can say "well look at other countries"
A. I don't give a damn about other countries...just this one right here. The United States of America. B. The latest facts and figures you can find for murder rates unless you go searching country by country in their own newspapers....are more than 5-7yrs old. There is one map that's only 2yrs old and do you wanna know what it shows? The highest murder rates in the world are found in South and Central America(which given my last post isn't that shocking), oh and surprise, surprise, surprise! The African Continent.

So if you really think we have it that tragically bad here...why don't you put your money where your mouth is, and move to a country where it's really ugly. I give you about a 1 in 10 chance[that's 10%] of surviving more than a year in those other places. Because in those places..you HAVE no rights. They are the dictatorial shitholes of the world. Where talking against the government will literally get you disappeared or gunned down in the street. Where even looking at the wrong person will get you killed.

Now someone I'm sure will come behind me and say that the percentages I quote are off and that they're actually much higher. Here's the problem...those percentages aren't calculated by the population total as a whole. They do it..in 100,000 person increments to enlarge the numbers. It's called a "per capita" calculation. It's just a tad dishonest in my own not so humble opinion.

That is allTANSTAAFL
I now return you to your regularly scheduled insanity and inanity.

8 comments:

What do you mean main page? To comment on articles there is an auto-approve process. He has to confirm the email that was sent when he registered. Here is the link to register for local news story commenting. http://www.mymotherlode.com/personal/profile/

I still have many of your comments pending approval, I am not excited about editing and while you have good points, I’ve just been slower about it.

We were having much this same discussion regarding kids and why today's kids are being kept closer to the house these days. My opinion is that horrible things aren't happening more often now than they did then, it's just that now with 24 hour news coverage and cable and satelite what once was local news is now national, if not world, news. The Aurora shooting, for example, would have rated a short blurb on the six o'clock news thirty or forty years ago, now it's up front all day for the past two days with the talking heads picking apart every detail...because they have air time to fill.The good news is we're better informed. The bad news is...we're better informed.

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About Me

I'm an American by the grace of god. I love most forms of music, prefer to grill my food over any other form of cooking and love a good brew. I'm sarcastic, cynical and occasionally very nasty. Oddly enuff I'm a fairly gentle soul despite that. I don't bite..much. Oh and I despise most of the current crop of politicians. I believe that probably about 75% of them at a local, state and federal level need to be loaded into a rocket and fired into the sun. I don't pull punches, and I don't always speak in way that most people would consider polite. Still..you might enjoy what I think and write.